The Novelist: a flawed but important game

In the PC/Mac game The Novelist, you
play a very nosy ghost living in a house the Kaplan family rented
for the summer. You flit through the house, exploring their
thoughts, memories and dreams. When they sleep, you can whisper
directions into the ears of Dan, the family patriarch. This
influences the outcome of the Kaplans' story.

It isn't as fun as it sounds.

The Novelist tells the story of Dan Kaplan, who
has brought his family to a coastal house so he can finish the most
important novel of his career while, according to Orthogonal Games,
"trying to be the best husband and father he can be." It's a
cerebral game, one that "asks one central question: can you achieve
your dreams without pushing away the people you love?"

It was a ballsy game to make, for reasons we'll get to, and it
prompted Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun to write two
reviews: an emotional
reaction ("I frequently cried at the outcomes of the
decisions I made for the Kaplan family.") and an objective
reaction ("…it's an awkward, drawn-out and often
monotonous journey…"). Meer is a game critic writing for a
game-centric blog, which may explain why it's hard for him to
acknowledge the deep-cutting truth: The
Novelist just doesn't work as a videogame.

That doesn't mean it isn't an important step forward.

The Novelist tells its story by scattering Post-It
notes, diaries and letters throughout the house and letting you
discover them. Kent Hudson, the game's lone creator, has done this
before in games like BioShock 2. The problem is, people
don't leave incredibly personal things like this lying around to be
found. The first time you find an unguarded diary in a game
like The Novelist, it's exciting; reading it feels
mischievous. By the time you've found 10 diaries, though, it feels
like a game mechanic. Inauthentic. Perfunctory.

The Novelist's key gameplay conceit, aside from
riffling through the Kaplan's belongings, is a stealth system that
impels you to never be seen by the Kaplans. You can cause light
fixtures to flicker, drawing their attention away from a room you'd
like to explore. There's little else to it beyond that, so the
stealth element is a mostly meaningless obstacle to the story. You
can turn it off and play in "story" mode, thankfully, but that
creates a new problem. It becomes, as author and Georgia Tech
professor Ian Bogost put it in his review of Gone Home, "a complicated menu
system for selecting narrative fragments."

In his efforts to communicate complicated emotions, Hudson
too-conveniently stuffs the Kaplans' home with hackneyed mementos.
Early on players will discover a drawing from Tommy, the son,
depicting his father weeping over a typewriter while Tommy stands
in the background looking sad. The trope of children revealing
their deepest insecurities and fears via Crayola drawings is vastly
overused in film and TV shows, and The
Novelist deploys it over and over.

Slowly, the rooms and spaces in The
Novelist begin to feel unreal. The player soon
understands that to reach the end -- to "win" -- they're really
just playing an egg-hunt in a toybox filled with plastic people.
The found-mementos method of storytelling in games doesn't work so
well when it's relied upon so heavily.

Hudson added variety to his storytelling by building in the
ability to read the characters' minds. His writing is smart and
believable, but in each chapter, the characters invariably possess
one or two great desires that compel them to act single-mindedly.
Linda wants her marriage to be stronger and she wants to pursue a
career in painting. Tommy wants more of dad's time. Dan wants to
write his book and drink. Players rarely see a side of the Kaplans
that isn't directly related to what each character wants.

That makes it very hard to like any of them, since they rarely
show any attention to each others' needs without direct influence
from you. How self-absorbed must Dan and Linda be to ignore the
disturbing drawings Tommy creates so prolifically? Only you can
make Dan act less like a selfish prick. Until you intervene, he's
on autopilot, wandering zombie-like through the house, exchanging
only the occasional clipped comment with his family.

By giving power over the Kaplans to the player, The
Novelist limits their potential for believable
development. The interactive nature of videogames empowers players
in this story, and by necessity strips power from the characters.
You make all the decisions, and they're reduced to whiny, steaming
flesh bags of need and want.

Those who dominate the game industry are afraid to write stories
that aren't framed by a heavy barrel and an iron sight, and here we have The
Novelist making a genuine effort to tell a valuable
interactive story about "life, family, and the choices we make."
Making this game took courage.

Perhaps if The Novelist had been a novel, it
would have avoided the pitfalls the "game" parts impose upon it.
Then again, who would have paid attention to a novel about a
struggling novelist trying to balance life and family? Obviously,
Hudson wouldn't have written that book; he wanted to use an
interactive medium to add weight to his story by offering choices
and different outcomes.

Perhaps there is a way to do that elegantly. Videogames might
one day be a great way of telling a story like The Novelist,
but before that can happen interactive storytelling in videogames
must be more interesting than whispering something into the ear of
your sleeping protagonist, or picking between an evil or good action on a "conversation
wheel."

The truth is videogames are not yet as good as novels or films
when it comes to telling stories. The
Novelist crashes headlong into that reality by throwing
the full weight of a story upon the best storytelling tools games
currently have to offer. It doesn't work, but it reveals something
about the medium, and for that reason The
Novelist is important.